


Not Asked but Answered

by Perpetual Motion (perpetfic)



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Getting Together, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-11
Updated: 2015-01-11
Packaged: 2018-03-07 01:28:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3155792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perpetfic/pseuds/Perpetual%20Motion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lip asks for nothing but does everything, and George is a little in love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Asked but Answered

**Author's Note:**

  * For [regonym](https://archiveofourown.org/users/regonym/gifts).



Lip literally asks for nothing. Well, okay, he asked for George's cigarette that one time, but that was especially special, holy-shit-we-did-not-die-how-is-that-shell-a-dud circumstances. But, yeah, in every other situation George has ever witnessed, Lip asks for nothing.

But Lip does everything. George is pretty sure Lip doesn't realize they all see him take care of everyone. George is also pretty sure if any of them tried to say thank you, Lip would give them a bashful smile and say "you're welcome," but he’d really mean, "Oh, I don't need praise. I'm just the nicest fucking guy you will ever meet in your life."

George is still occasionally surprised Lip’s even in the military, let alone a volunteer, let alone a goddamn paratrooper. He’s so…contained, just one of those quiet, confident guys who handles his shit. The rest of them—okay, most of the rest of them because Bull and Johnny are sort of the same as Lip—they’re a bunch of loud, show-off assholes. Lip’s a cut above all of them, George thinks. He’s especially above George.

Well, George would like him to be, but George knows better than to voice that aloud. He thinks about it, sometimes. Not in Bastogne. It’s so fucking cold there George is pretty sure his dick will snap off if he gives it any incentive to stand at attention. But he thought about it before Bastogne, and he thinks about it after, especially after seeing the way Lip’s mouth fit around a cigarette. 

“Here,” George says when he sees Lip taking out his smokes. He holds out his lighter so Lip can use it, and he stares at the flame so he doesn’t stare at Lip’s face. They’ve been on the troop trucks for hours, everyone shivering together and bitching. Except Lip, who shivered and shook his head at some of the more outrageous stuff being said.

“Thanks, George,” Lip replies. He takes a drag, coughs three times, and takes another drag. 

Two days later, he’s flat on his back and nearly crazy with fever, coughing into his helmet to try and muffle the sound. Captain Speirs is standing in the doorway of the half-bombed house they’re in for the night, and he’s watching the way Lip’s shoulders heave.

“You need a doctor,” Speirs says.

“It’s just a cough,” Lip replies.

“Bullshit,” George says from the other side of the room. He glances at Speirs after he’s said it, realizing too late—because this is the life of George Luz—that maybe his new commanding officer doesn’t want his opinion on the matter.

“Luz is right,” Speirs says.

“I can’t come off the line,” Lip says. “The men need me.”

Not as much as they did, George thinks. Speirs has proven quickly that his work in Foy wasn’t a one-time thing. The men are still mostly scared of him, but they trust he won’t get them killed. The fact that Speirs doesn’t seem to mind George speaking his mind makes George like him more already. 

“Then we have to bring the fever down,” Speirs says. “Luz, go search for any sort of supplies.”

“Yes, Sir,” George says. He searches house to house, waking half the company as he trips over blankets and helmets. There’s nothing to be found. People left this town in a hurry, but they didn’t leave stupid. What aspirin bottles are around are empty, and there’s only a few torn labels to prove other medicine might have been around.

Two days after that, they billet with a German couple who offer them strudel and schnapps when they hear Lip cough. George sits in the far corner of the room taking turns with Speirs in getting Lip liquored up and fed. 

“Hell, if it doesn’t work, at least you’ll smell good tomorrow,” George tells Lip.

Lip manages a weak smile, and George knows it’s more to assure him everything will be okay than because Lip finds him funny.

Lip asks for nothing, and he gives everything in return. With that weak smile, George falls  
in love. He’s always had a thing for the quiet ones. 

Lip wakes up the next day sweaty and shaking but no longer feverish. The doctor at the field hospital looks amazed after George gives him the rundown of how bad it’s been.

“And the cough?” 

“Much better,” Lip says, but the way he’s holding his shoulders tells George that’s a dirty lie. He says nothing and follows Lip out the door and down the road. As soon as they round a bend and are out of view of the hospital, Lip nearly doubles over with a cough. 

“C’mon,” George says, grabbing him by the waist and dragging him down the street. “Almost there.”

The cough actually does settle down a little by Hagenau, but Lip is still drawn and sweaty, the fever coming back in occasional bursts that last a few hours, but it’s never as bad as before, and Speirs doesn’t mention the hospital again. George drops Lip on the couch, and he feels like he’s won the day when Lip stays put and lets George put the blanket over him. When Speirs yells at Lip about a perfectly fine bed in the next room, George hides his grin. No way Lip’s going to a bedroom when there’s work to be done and men to assign and the guys in general to watch over. Speirs catches the end of George’s grin and gives a minute shake of his head. He knows it just as well, George figures. But he had to try.

Lip gets better. He gets his Lieutenant’s bars. Speirs buys him a drink, and then George sidles up to him when he’s alone at the bar and says, “Not a bad look,”

Lip looks down at his bars and smiles that bashful smile. “Thank you,” he says. He looks at George, and there’s a bit of a flush on his cheeks. His beer’s barely been touched, so George knows it’s not from alcohol. “And thank you.”

“For what?” George asks.

“Taking care of me.”

“Oh, hell, that was nothing. You’ve done three times as much for any of us.”

“It means a lot, George,” Lip says. “I appreciate it.”

There’s something in his eyes that makes George feel like he should be the bashful one, but bashful isn’t a word that’s ever defined George, so he just stares at Lip until Lip reaches up and grips his shoulder. It’s not the reassuring grip George has gotten from Lip in the past. It’s softer. Lip rubs his thumb upward along the side of George’s arm, and it’s so gentle George barely feels it through his uniform.

But he definitely feels it. 

“I was glad to help,” George says, as sincere as he can be, and Lip beams at him and cups the back of his neck for a moment. George leans a little closer so their foreheads are nearly touching. “You know, I’ve always wanted to make it with an officer.” It’s a risk, but George is pretty sure it’s not a big one.

Lip smiles. It’s not bashful, but it’s so sweet George thinks it might end him. “I’m still just me, George,” he says.

“Of course you are.”

Lip asks for nothing, but he doesn’t need to. George has always known how he’d answer.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so this doesn't actually fill the prompt Reg gave me, but it's still going to her because the prompt got me there, and I am very happy with this piece. Self-betaed. Typo call-out appreciated.


End file.
